Author: joey-pickert

With much fanfare and controversy, U2’s 360º tour rolls into Charlottesville on October 1. It’s only the third-ever rock show to set up in Scott Stadium after an April 2001 double bill of Dave Matthews Band and Neil Young, followed by The Rolling Stones’ performance in October 2005 during their Bigger Bang tour. Most of U2’s shows have sold out, and with a multimillion-dollar, panoramic stage set that opens the field up to fans, the Irish quartet stands to demolish stadium attendance records.

And on the topic of destruction—do you mind if we ask how exactly the band reconciles lead singer Bono’s save-the-world offstage ethics with the tour’s gargantuan carbon footprint? According to the Belfast Times, U2 will produce up to 20,117.5 tons of CO2 this year, equivalent to flying the band to Mars in a passenger plane. “It could be professional envy speaking here,” said David Byrne, who played at the Charlottesville Pavilion in June, “but it sure looks like, well, overkill, and just a wee bit out of balance given all the starving people in Africa and all.” According to U2 guitarist The Edge, the band has purchased carbon offsets to account for the tour’s eco-footprint.

Here are some other fantastically large facts and figures:

Cost of a Cavaliers football single game ticket: $23-50
Official ticket price range for U2’s 360º Tour: $30-253 (Ticketmaster)
Going rate for a general admission U2 concert ticket on the David A. Harrison III field: $699 (gotickets.com); $1600 (stubhub.com)
Cost of a Cavaliers season football ticket: $269

Scott Stadium official seating capacity: 61,500
Dave Matthews Band concert attendance: Approximately 50,000. The Bama Works Fund benefit concert was originally supposed to play Scott Stadium twice, but disappointing ticket sales led to the cancellation of the second night.
Rolling Stones concert attendance: 61,000
Estimated attendance of the October 1 U2 concert: Uncertain. U2 concert promoter Live Nation does not release projected ticket sales on a per-venue basis, but U2 manager Paul McGuinness told Rolling Stone that “the Claw,” a massive stage set with a 360º screen, has had the effect of expanding venue capacity.
Current Scott Stadium attendance record: 64,947, for a 2008 football game against South Carolina.
Lowest nightly rate for a hotel room in Charlottesville on October 1: $209.95 a night for two nights at the Comfort Inn Monticello. As of press time and according to hotels.com, it is the only vacant hotel in Charlottesville during the concert.
Next nearest available accommodations: Waynesboro

Height of U2’s solid-steel Claw set: 164 feet
Height of the Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang tour set: 85 feet—previously the world record-holder for a stadium set.
Number of separate subwoofers on U2’s set: 72
Number of Claws on tour: 3
Price tag of each Claw: Between $25 and $35 million.
Number of trucks required to transport U2’s complete stage: 120
Estimated carbon footprint of U2’s Scott Stadium concert: Approximately 457.2 tons, going by the tour average for each show.

Number of U2 tour dates in 2009: 44 total, with 20 in North America
Number of 2009 Virginia football games during regular season: 12, including five away games
Span of U2’s 2009 US tour: September 12-October 28
Span of UVA’s 2009 regular football season: September 5-November 28

Length of U2 tour setlist: 22-24 songs, including three encores.
Typical duration of U2’s set: Two hours and 15 minutes.
Length of an average NCAA football game: About 3 hours without overtime.

Years since U2’s last stadium tour: 11
Total projected global U2 tour ticket sales in 2009: 3 million
 

Sources: DMBalmanac.com, Hotels.com, Live Nation, Live Design Online, ncaa.com, Reuters, Rolling Stone, U2.com, virginiasports.com.

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Ten years ago, when Petronella Oostingh and her husband moved into a house on Harvest Drive, the nearby railway bridge over Old Ivy Road didn’t concern them much at first. Back then, she says, the concrete abutments that supported the rail overpass seemed sturdy enough to accommodate the frequent passage of load-bearing freight trains. Then she started noticing signs of decay: discoloration, crumbled bits of cement along the side of the road, and fractures that leaked water following rainfall.

Oostingh, a now-retired microscopist, says that the structure’s deterioration since then has been increasingly visible to her on “almost a daily basis.” What used to be hairline fractures expanded into tremendous fissures, and this reporter can attest that you don’t need a specialist’s eyes to see them. One of these cracks, about three feet above ground level on the right-side abutment as Old Ivy bears northwest, runs the entire length and breadth of the visible support column. Rain or shine, it keeps dripping water, and the cement underneath is gray-black, eroded, and always slick. “It’s bound to get worse, and it has been getting worse,” says Oostingh, who says she worries that the damaged abutment—the upper part of which is gradually moving outward, and now overhangs the rest—might collapse.

The railway bridge is part of a nearly 200-mile stretch of track, extending from Richmond through Charlottesville to Clifton Forge, that Dillwyn-based Buckingham Branch Railroad has shared with CSX Corporation since leasing it from the national conglomerate for 20 years, at $140,000 annually, in 2004. Both companies still use the line to carry freight, with Buckingham Branch running four trains per day, and CSX as many as eight. Amtrak uses the line as a passenger route. All of these pass over Old Ivy Road’s railway bridge, often while traffic idles underneath. Parents driving to and from the lower campus of St. Anne’s-Belfield School on Faulconer Drive, with students in preschool through fourth grade, must wait in line under the bridge to pick up and drop off their kids.

The bridge’s structural problems have caused trouble for commuters in the past. Elisa Ferrante, a UVA alum and former resident of the nearby Ivy Gardens, says she “always felt uneasy about that bridge.” In the winter of 2005, Ferrante and her friends almost crashed on the underpass, driving over a patch of snow that made their Jeep spin out of control, just missing the wall and leaving them facing oncoming traffic. “The road is too narrow and the hill makes everything slippery,” says Ferrante. “People also tend to drive a bit too fast past that bridge,” she adds—one of the reasons she no longer bikes to work through the Old Ivy corridor.

Clearly, the overpass presents a safety hazard, but what needs to be done about it, and by whom? Typically, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) oversees road maintenance and repair. They handled the repairs of the overpass that carries Old Ivy Road over the Route 29/250 bypass, after its support structure was damaged in a truck collision, so does that mean they should repair the nearby railway bridge? VDOT Public Affairs Manager Lou Hatter tells C-VILLE that the State’s responsibility for inspection of the bridge “is limited to verifying the vertical clearance for traffic passing under it.” Legally, he says, “[the] bridge’s owner bears responsibility for maintenance and repairs, as well as liability.”

That owner, Buckingham Branch, doesn’t seem as concerned about the bridge’s condition as residents are. Vice President Steve Powell says that all the company’s properties are routinely inspected, and that the bridge “is in fine shape.” Although he has not inspected it personally, Powell says that they’ll make it a priority in light of the community concern.

Locals warily pass under the Old Ivy railway bridge, its abutments crumbling and dripping with water. For now, it gets the hot potato treatment.

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Accessing the attic of the Massie-Wills residence means literally climbing the stairs, using both hands to scale the approximately seventy-degree incline. Reaching the top provides a fresh perspective on the historic designation of the house at 215 4th Street NE. The space contains a small library arrayed in bookshelves and boxes along the far wall, as well as loudspeakers, paints and a piece of unfinished artwork propped against the exposed brick. Strands of digital cables hang from a crossbeam, left by an Internet startup that rented the space in the 1990s.

Nothing in the attic is nearly as old as the domicile itself, but no other room in the house feels quite as lived-in. Built in 1830 by Harden Massie and then renovated by F. M. Wills around 1870 to add an apartment on the ground floor, the house has changed hands several times. Since owner Pooh Johnson purchased the Massie-Wills house in 1989, the place has headquartered a gift shop, a publisher, an art consortium and a real estate company, meanwhile accommodating tenants from married couples to the college-aged.

Recently, however, Johnson put the property up for sale.

“Taking on tenants worked up to a point,” she says. “And we’ve been very fortunate in a way, because people have always been wanting to rent it.”

But lately, she says, a declining market has left the house unoccupied, and continuing to rent the house is no longer worth the trouble.

“I don’t want to rent it like a boarding house again,” says Johnson. “It’s hard when you let it out to kids who don’t care about it, who don’t realize what it is. Three months later, there are four broken windowpanes.”

Johnson has devoted years to restoring the house to its original condition, stripping layers off the kitchen floors and stairs to reveal hardwood pine, reinstalling antique doors and light fixtures. Fixing a shattered window isn’t as simple as finding a capable smithy; for Johnson, it requires tracking down the right type and dimension of 19th-century glass.

215 4th Street NE is listed as a contributing structure in the National and State Register district, an honorary designation given to properties that help preserve the historic integrity of the area. Charlottesville’s Zoning Ordinance lists a variety of factors that determine whether a local property may be deemed “historic,” including the structure’s age and condition, character of design, overall aesthetic quality, and state of preservation. Sites associated with a historic person or event or with a renowned architect or master craftsman also qualify. If one or more of these qualities were altered drastically, says Johnson, the residence would lose its contributor status.

The Massie-Wills house also falls within the North Downtown Architectural Design Control district, which means that any exterior change to the property is subject to evaluation by the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review. The Board’s guidelines generally require that commercial “rehabilitation” restore and maintain as many historic elements of the structure as possible, and that any contemporary modifications must be aesthetically compatible with the original design. Regulations prohibit the application of “false historical appearances, such as ‘Colonial,’ ‘Olde English,’ or other theme designs,” as well as additions that would “duplicate the form, material, and detailing of the structure to the extent that they compromise the historic character of the structure.”

In many cases, such as with the recently Urban-Outfitted ex-Hardware Store, these regulations deal with matters of taste, and become points of contention for locals who resent the corporate appropriation of their culture.

The house on 215 4th Street NE is one of a local few remaining so close to its original condition. “There aren’t a lot of them around,” says Johnson, which is why she has resisted bids from bargain-hunters and wealthy tourists who hope the sluggish economy might cut them a deal. Johnson is looking to sell for a little over $1 million, and says that if the house doesn’t fetch a suitable price, she’ll take it off the market and renovate it. “It’s such a jewel, because it’s so unusual. Plaster walls. Beaded paneling. Everything is pretty much original,” she says. “This is the way it looked.”

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It was a hub of renovation and development for a few months there, but now that the bricklayers have left, the Downtown Mall is conspicuously silent. Indeed, throughout Charlottesville and Albemarle County, many development projects in the approval pipeline have slowed or scaled back to adjust to the sluggish economy. But there is one area rich in development projects and seemingly impervious to the market. That place? UVA, of course.

Walking the length of the JPA corridor, for example, entails sidestepping at least one major construction zone. Moving west, you encounter the Emily Couric Cancer Center, a $70 million treatment facility on schedule for completion by 2011. In June of the same year, UVA’s $105 million South Lawn project will conclude its first phase of construction.

Other ongoing University projects include the $40.7 million Claude Moore Medical Education Building, due for completion in May 2010, and Bavaro Hall, a $37.5 million complex of classrooms and offices on Emmet Street that will accommodate students and faculty in the School of Education after construction ends next April. Also, last month, the University began demolition work on Dobie, Balz and Watson dorms with the goal of installing two new freshman residence halls by 2011, at an estimated cost of between $66.4 and $72.4 million.

As UVA keeps growing, proximate private projects that cater specifically to students are also moving forward. UVA’s Delta Upsilon chapter, in conjunction with Beta Theta Pi, recently announced plans to build the University’s first new fraternity house in more than 50 years. The three-story, 7,000-square foot house will cost over $1 million to build on the 135 Madison Lane site, currently an apartment complex that the fraternities are spending another $700,000 to raze. Formal groundbreaking will occur on September 26, with completion scheduled for fall semester 2010.

Where state money is a spur for University development, Realtor Tim Carson says the very presence of students themselves drives housing development projects. Students are “a primary source for many investors who wanted to have a stable income stream,” he says. “[They] are typically from upper and middle class families, and the Honor Code provides an extra credit reference.”

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